


On Being Chosen (First)

by andtheyfightcrime



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, and it shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 12:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andtheyfightcrime/pseuds/andtheyfightcrime
Summary: Buffy Summers has had quite the life. And death. And everything in between. Fragments and thoughts about her legacy and what she remembers and wishes she could forget.Vague spoilers for the whole series.





	On Being Chosen (First)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written and posted in Livejournal October 22nd, 2002. This was found and slightly edited and 'polished' August 31st, 2019. Hopefully the next go around will be sooner rather than later.
> 
> I wrote this during season 7 when I was feeling rather disconnected from the whole series and also rationalizing how Buffy's character growth/lack of in season 7 frustrated/intrigued me. This was also during a wave of anti-Buffy Summers sentiment in the fandom, from complaints that she was too 'cold' and 'such a bitch' and I was trying to reconcile that with how I saw her character. Did I like the choices she made in Season 7? Not particularly. Especially with the speeches.
> 
> So this ....not a poem came from that place. It definitely has that early oughts Livejournal feel about it, all it's missing is a Radiohead lyric.

Monsters with human faces.

She had kissed two of them, three if you counted Faith.

Buffy didn’t.

The dreams happened regardless if she slept or not, so she kept the light on and stared at her hands

Tiny hands, her lifeline spiraling into some distant nowhere place, only that it exists.

Fuchsia passion pink and berry blush, French tipped fingernails that tore into silk and bit into wood and ash.

Splinters embedded themselves underneath half moons and dirt scrabbling into her sleeves.

That ugly black dress, something she wouldn’t have been caught alive in

His embrace, tenuous and far-reaching like he could pick up all the pieces for her. Play the game.

Both of them losers, only she didn’t know it until it

Almost too late, but she doesn’t need a watch to keep the time.

It’s always the end of the world, little universes collapsing around her with one breath, one lazy lash out of place.

Beat beat beat goes her hands, her heart

and her boots against the bones of the dead.

Temperatures dropping, that time of year, and chill biting at her nose, creeping up her cheeks, the hollow of her neck

Swan-like, and she drapes herself in gauze and lace, floating dream like pieces

Maybe to remind herself that she might have had Wings.

Clouds materialize out of her mouth but only when no one else is around.

Dawn complains of the cold and Willow offers to make a fire in the decorative fireplace.

Her hands outstretched as his floundered

Grasping. Desperate. Bloody whorls.

Gasping

Can’t breathe, can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, Will.

Big lungfuls of the dark to get the taste of death out of her mouth, and it doesn’t seem to work because it’s one and the same. She might be full of love, but beneath her eyelids she sees pennies and her lips taste like blood.

The girl, running frantically and it’s always toward the dark alley. Stop, she wants to scream. It’s a trap.

It’s always a trap

Little baby bird cupped in her hands, down tickling her palm. She’s stuck in a tree and she can’t put the bird down because it’s turned into this awful squawking

Thing and blood drips from its beak and it lunges for her neck.

He never bites her and she can’t tell if she’s pleased or disturbed or why she’s even thinking about him biting her there

Condensation against her fingertips and she traces spidery wreaths and curlicues on the glass. Look, Dawnie, it’s snow

Falling down, dusting her eyelashes and decorating her hair and his gaze is enough to keep her warm forever

If I was anywhere but here, I’d still be …

Here, because this is it.

It doesn’t have to be this way!

The heroine cries silently, the camera panning over her full mouth and glistening cheeks. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We’ll always have Paris.

Fuck you, Faith says, and turns off the TV.

Like a big cat, or a bomb. Slinky. Ripe. Eyes that glitter with an unspoken promise. Her lips Buffy could have written a sonnet about, if she was interested in that kind of thing.

Live Large, B.

She was the only one that could make her feel small.

Buffy never let her mother hold her after fifteen, not really. Curling up against her, leaning against, propping her face in her hands.

Room – temperature.

That’s what Buffy notices first

and the lack of heartbeat.

Food starts tasting funny, like plastic and the air that surrounds the ice cubes in the freezer. Xander says there’s nothing wrong, but she makes a new batch of ice cubes anyway.

Yesterday Willow’s potted African violets died. Just died.

At night she hears whispers. Nothing earth shattering, and one of the voices even sounds like it’s singing a lullaby.

“Tara?”

Dawn starts wearing two sweaters inside and gallons of hot chocolate start appearing in the kitchen with flecks of cinnamon in the foam and Buffy never burns her tongue once.

Willow starts looking more Willow-y and less rehab story of the week. Xander comes over and they watch the Snoopy Christmas special.

She laughs until it hurts.

Dawn’s asleep on the sofa, with mom’s favorite quilt draped over her, and Buffy can’t stop hovering over her. Making sure she’s still breathing.

Stroking that shiny, glossy hair over and over

The best thing would be for her to grow up Dawn, and not as Buffy’s shadow, because she wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

No, really.

The fiftieth time someone says, From beneath you it devours until she snaps and rolls her eyes

I get it already. The Hellmouth is going to reopen, there’s going to be carnage and death and possibly adult language

Bitch. Whore. Fucking frigid cock tease fucking yes right there I always knew you had it in you harder YES

And all you had to do was die.


End file.
